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Unformatted text preview: BUS 576 Fall 2007 Team CleanShield Phase I Report November 7, 2007 Team Members: Jeff Agricola Sarah Edge Jeremy Palmer Arlo Reese Michael Rushing Aditi Shah James Smith Executives: Bill Flanagan Baba Prasad Executive Summary Not assigned yet. I. Plasma Aided Antimicrobial Finish A. Technology Review A-1. State of the Art Technology There are several processes currently on the market that can be used to functionalize fabrics and other materials with antimicrobial agents. These processes typically employ one of two strategies: either the antimicrobial agents are directly mixed into the raw materials before they are fabricated into working materials or the working materials are directly functionalized before they are turned into finished goods. For fabrics in particular, the method for functionalizing the fabric material is dependent on whether the fabric material is composed of synthetic fibers such as Nylon or natural fibers such as cotton. For synthetic fibers the antimicrobial agents are mixed into the raw materials before they are turned into fabric. This method ensures that the antimicrobial agents are durably embedded in the fabric and can withstand repeated washing cycles. However, in the process of fashioning the fabric into a garment, nearly 30% of the fabric is discarded. This large amount of waste increases the cost of functionalizing the fabric with antimicrobial agents. Moreover this process can only be used with synthetic fibers, which are chemically synthesized. Natural fiber fabrics, on the other hand, use the second type of process in which the woven sheets of fabric are chemically functionalized with metal ions such as silver or copper. This process is typically the bottleneck for the manufacturing antimicrobial fabrics, doubling the production time, because of the drying and soaking stages the fabrics must undergo. This type of process is also very energy intensive because the chemical reactions that take place must be accelerated by raising the temperature of the solution. Finally, the effluents from this process must be cleaned to decrease their toxicity and also to recover excess metal ions that did not adhere to the fabric. The cleanup and recovery is an expensive process, limiting the viability of this process on an industrial scale. As a result of these factors, fabrics coated with this process usually see a two or three fold increase in cost of production. A-2. Atmospheric Plasma-Aided Antimicrobial Finish Technology The atmospheric plasma-aided antimicrobial finish technology is a process for functionalizing materials with a permanent antimicrobial finish. The intellectual property rights for this process are owned by North Carolina State University in the form of a patent. The process described by this patent integrates several off-the-shelf industrial machines along with commercially manufactured commodity chemicals to form an industrial scale process for applying an antimicrobial finish to raw materials such as textiles, plastics, and paper. as textiles, plastics, and paper....
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